The Stories of Paul Bowles

by Paul Bowles

  “Will you eat with us?” Ghazi inquired anxiously. It was clear he had read that an invitation should be extended on such occasions; it was equally clear that he was in terror lest she accept.

  She declined and rose. The glare of the street and the commotion of the passers-by had tired her. She took her leave of all the students while Driss was inside the café, and went down to the restaurant on the beach where she generally had lunch.

  There while she ate, looking out at the water, she thought: “That was amusing, but it was just enough,” and she decided not to go on the picnic.

  She did not even wait until the next day to stock up with provisions at the English grocery. She bought three bottles of ordinary red wine, two cans of Jambon Olida, several kinds of Huntley and Palmer’s biscuits, a bottle of stuffed olives and five hundred grams of chocolates full of liqueurs. The English lady made a splendid parcel for her.

  At noon next day she was drinking an orgeat at the Café du Télégraphe Anglais. A carriage drove up, drawn by two horses loaded down with sleighbells. Behind the driver, shielded from the sun by the beige canopy of the victoria, sat Ghazi and Mjid, looking serious and pleasant. They got down to help her in. As they drove off up the hill, Mjid inspected the parcel approvingly and whispered: “The wine?”

  “All inside,” she said.

  The locusts made a great noise from the dusty cliffs beside the road as they came to the edge of town. “Our nightingales,” smiled Mjid. “Here is a ring for you. Let me see your hand.”

  She was startled, held out her left hand.

  “No, no! The right!” he cried. The ring was of massive silver; it fitted her index finger. She was immensely pleased.

  “But you are too nice. What can I give you?” She tried to looked pained and helpless.

  “The pleasure of having a true European friend,” said Mjid gravely.

  “But I’m American,” she objected.

  “All the better.”

  Ghazi was looking silently toward the distant Riffian mountains. Prophetically he raised his arm with its silk sleeve blowing in the hot wind, and pointed across the cracked mud fields.

  “Down that way,” he said softly, “there is a village where all the people are mad. I rode there once with one of my father’s assistants. It’s the water they drink.”

  The carriage lurched. They were climbing. Below them the sea began to spread out, a poster blue. The tops of the mountains across the water in Spain rose above the haze. Mjid started to sing. Ghazi covered his ears with his fat dimpled hands.

  The summer villa was inhabited by a family with a large number of children. After dismissing the carriage driver and instructing him not to return, since he wanted to walk back down, Mjid took his guests on a tour of inspection of the grounds. There were a good many wells; Ghazi had certainly seen these countless times before, but he stopped as if in amazement at each well as they inspected it, and whispered: “Think of it!”

  On a rocky elevation above the farm stood a great olive tree. There they spread the food, and ate slowly. The Berber woman in charge of the farm had given them several loaves of native bread, and olives and oranges. Ghazi wanted Mjid to decline this food.

  “A real European picnic is what we should have.”

  But she insisted they take the oranges.

  The opening of the ham was observed in religious silence. It was no time before both cans were consumed. Then they attacked the wine.

  “If my father could see us,” said Ghazi, draining a tin cup of it. “Ham and wine!”

  Mjid drank a cup, making a grimace of distaste. He lay back, his arms folded behind his head. “Now that I’ve finished, I can tell you that I don’t like wine, and everyone knows that ham is filthy. But I hate our severe conventions.”

  She suspected that he had rehearsed the little speech.

  Ghazi was continuing to drink the wine. He finished a bottle all by himself, and excusing himself to his companions, took off his gandoura. Soon he was asleep.

  “You see?” whispered Mjid. He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Now we can go to the rose garden.” He led her along the ledge, and down a path away from the villa. It was very narrow; thorny bushes scraped their arms as they squeezed through.

  “In America we call walking like this going Indian fashion,” she remarked.

  “Ah, yes?” said Mjid. “I’m going to tell you about Ghazi. One of his father’s women was a Senegalese slave, poor thing. She made Ghazi and six other brothers for her husband, and they all look like Negroes.”

  “Don’t you consider Negroes as good as you?” she asked.

  “It’s not a question of being as good, but of being as beautiful,” he answered firmly.

  They had come out into a clearing on the hillside. He stopped and looked closely at her. He pulled his shirt off over his head. His body was white.

  “My brother has blond hair,” he said with pride. Then confusedly he put the shirt back on and laid his arm about her shoulder. “You are beautiful because you have blue eyes. But even some of us have blue eyes. In any case, you are magnificent!” He started ahead again, singing a song in Spanish.

  “Es pa’ mi la más bonita,

  La mujer que yo más quiero…”

  They came to a cactus fence, with a small gate of twisted barbed wire. A yellow puppy rushed up to the gate and barked delightedly.

  “Don’t be afraid,” said Mjid, although she had given no sign of fear. “You are my sister. He never bites the family.” Continuing down a dusty path between stunted palms which were quite dried-up and yellow, they came presently to a primitive bower made of bamboo stalks. In the center was a tiny bench beside a wall, and around the edges several desiccated rose plants grew out of the parched earth. From these he picked two bright red roses, placing one in her hair and the other under his chechia, so that it fell like a lock of hair over his forehead. The thick growth of thorny vines climbing over the trellises cast a shadow on the bench. They sat awhile in silence in the shade.

  Mjid seemed lost in thought. Finally he took her hand. “I’m thinking,” he said in a whisper. “When one is far away from the town, in one’s own garden, far from everyone, sitting where it is quiet, one always thinks. Or one plays music,” he added.

  Suddenly she was conscious of the silence of the afternoon. Far in the distance she heard the forlorn crow of a cock. It made her feel that the sun would soon set, that all creation was on the brink of a great and final sunset. She abandoned herself to sadness, which crept over her like a chill.

  Mjid jumped up. “If Ghazi wakes!” he cried. He pulled her arm impatiently. “Come, we’ll take a walk!” They hurried down the path, through the gate, and across a bare stony plateau toward the edge of the mountain.

  “There’s a little valley nearby where the brother of the caretaker lives. We can go there and get some water.”

  “Way down there?” she said, although she was encouraged by the possibility of escaping from Ghazi for the afternoon. Her mood of sadness had not left her. They were running downhill, leaping from one rock to the next. Her rose fell off and she had to hold it in her hand.

  The caretaker’s brother was cross-eyed. He gave them some foul-smelling water in an earthen jug.

  “Is it from the well?” she inquired under her breath to Mjid.

  His face darkened with displeasure. “When you’re offered something to drink, even if it’s poison, you should drink it and thank the man who offers it.”

  “Ah,” she said. “So it is poison. I thought so.”

  Mjid seized the jug from the ground between them, and taking it to the edge of the cliff, flung it down with elegant anger. The cross-eyed man protested, and then he laughed. Mjid did not look at him, but walked into the house and began a conversation with some of the Berber women inside, leaving her to face the peasant alone and stammer her dozen words of Arabic with him. The afternoon sun was hot, and the idea of some water to drink had completely filled her mind. She sat down per
versely with her back to the view and played with pebbles, feeling utterly useless and absurd. The cross-eyed man continued to laugh at intervals, as if it provided an acceptable substitute for conversation.

  When Mjid finally came out, all his ill-humor had vanished. He put out his hand to help her up, and said: “Come, we’ll climb back up and have tea at the farm. I have my own room there. I decorated it myself. You’ll look at it and tell me if you have as pleasant a room in your house in America for drinking tea.” They set off, up the mountain.

  The woman at the villa was obsequious. She fanned the charcoal fire and fetched water from the well. The children were playing a mysterious, quiet game at a far end of the enclosure. Mjid led her into the house, through several dim rooms, and finally into one that seemed the last in the series. It was cooler, and a bit darker than the others.

  “You’ll see,” said Mjid, clapping his hands twice. Nothing happened. He called peevishly. Presently the woman entered. She smoothed the mattresses on the floor, and opened the blinds of the one small window, which gave onto the sea. Then she lit several candles which she struck onto the tile floor, and went out.

  His guest stepped to the window. “Can you ever hear the sea here?”

  “Certainly not. It’s about six kilometers away.”

  “But it looks as though you could drop a stone into it,” she objected, hearing the false inflection of her voice; she was not interested in the conversation, she had the feeling that everything had somehow gone wrong.

  “What am I doing here? I have no business here. I said I wouldn’t come.” The idea of such a picnic had so completely coincided with some unconscious desire she had harbored for many years. To be free, out-of-doors, with some young man she did not know—could not know—that was probably the important part of the dream. For if she could not know him, he could not know her. She swung the little blind shut and hooked it. A second later she opened it again and looked out at the vast expanse of water growing dim in the twilight.

  Mjid was watching her. “You are crazy,” he said at last despairingly. “You find yourself here in this beautiful room. You are my guest. You should be happy. Ghazi has already left to go to town. A friend came by with a horse and he got a ride in. You could lie down, sing, drink tea, you could be happy with me…” He stopped, and she saw that he was deeply upset.

  “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” she said very quickly.

  He sighed dramatically; perhaps it was a genuine sigh. She thought: “There is nothing wrong. It should have been a man, not a boy, that’s all.” It did not occur to her to ask herself: “But would I have come if it had been a man?” She looked at him tenderly, and decided that his face was probably the most intense and beautiful she had ever seen. She murmured a word without quite knowing what it was.

  “What?” he said.

  She repeated it: “Incredible.”

  He smiled inscrutably.

  They were interrupted by the sound of the woman’s bare feet slapping the floor. She had a tremendous tray bearing the teapot and its accessories.

  While he made the tea, Mjid kept glancing at her as if to assure himself that she was still there. She sat perfectly still on one of the mattresses, waiting.

  “You know,” he said slowly, “if I could earn money I’d go away tomorrow to wherever I could earn it. I finish school this year anyway, and my brother hasn’t the money to send me to a Medersa at Fez. But even if he had it, I wouldn’t go. I always stay away from school. Only my brother gets very angry.”

  “What do you do instead? Go bathing?”

  He laughed scornfully, sampled the tea, poured it back into the pot, and sat up on his haunches. “In another minute it will be ready. Bathing? Ah, my friend, it has to be something important for me to risk my brother’s anger. I make love those days, all day long!”

  “Really? You mean all day?” She was thoughtful.

  “All day and most of the night. Oh, I can tell you it’s marvelous, magnificent. I have a little room,” he crawled over to her and put his hand on her knee, looking up into her face with an eagerness born of faith. “A room my family knows nothing about, in the Casbah. And my little friend is twelve. She is like the sun, soft, beautiful, lovely. Here, take your tea.” He sipped from his glass noisily, smacking his lips.

  “All day long,” she reflected aloud, settling back against the cushions.

  “Oh, yes. But I’ll tell you a secret. You have to eat as much as you can. But that’s not so hard. You’re that much hungrier.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said. A little gust of wind blew along the floor and the candles flickered.

  “How good it is to have tea and then lie down to rest!” he exclaimed, pouring her more tea and stretching out beside her on the mattress. She made a move as if to spring up, then lay still.

  He went on. “It’s curious that I never met you last year.”

  “I wasn’t in town very much. Only evenings. And then I was at the beach. I lived on the mountain.”

  He sat up. “On this mountain here? And I never saw you! Oh, what bad luck!”

  She described the house, and since he insisted, told him the rent she had paid. He was ferociously indignant. “For that miserable house that hasn’t even a good well? You had to send your Mohammed down the road for water! I know all about that house. My poor friend, you were robbed! If I ever see that dirty bandit I’ll smash his face. I’ll demand the money you paid him, and we’ll make a trip together.” He paused. “I mean, I’ll give it to you of course, and you can decide what you want to do with it.”

  As he finished speaking he held up her handbag, opened it, and took out her fountain pen. “It’s a beautiful one,” he murmured. “Do you have many?”

  “It’s the only one.”

  “Magnificent!” He tossed it back in and laid the bag on the floor.

  Settling against the pillows he ruminated. “Perhaps some day I shall go to America, and then you can invite me to your house for tea. Each year we’ll come back to Morocco and see our friends and bring back cinema stars and presents from New York.”

  What he was saying seemed so ridiculous to her that she did not bother to answer. She wanted to ask him about the twelve-year-old girl, but she could find no excuse for introducing the subject again.

  “You’re not happy?” He squeezed her arm.

  She raised herself to listen. With the passing of the day the countryside had attained complete silence. From the distance she could hear a faint but clear voice singing. She looked at Mjid.

  “The muezzin? You can hear it from here?”

  “Of course. It’s not so far to the Marshan. What good is a country house where you can’t hear the muezzin? You might as well live in the Sahara.”

  “Sh. I want to listen.”

  “It’s a good voice, isn’t it? They have the strongest voices in the world.”

  “It always makes me sad.”

  “Because you’re not of the faith.”

  She reflected a minute and said: “I think that’s true.” She was about to add: “But your faith says women have no souls.” Instead she rose from the mattress and smoothed her hair. The muezzin had ceased. She felt quite chilled. “This is over,” she said to herself. They stumbled down the dark road into town, saying very little on the way.

  He took her to her small hotel. The cable she had vaguely expected for weeks was there. They climbed the stairs to her room, the concierge looking suspiciously after them. Once in the room, she opened the envelope. Mjid had thrown himself onto the bed.

  “I’m leaving for Paris tomorrow.”

  His face darkened, and he shut his eyes for an instant. “You must go away? All right. Let me give you my address.” He pulled out his wallet, searched for a piece of paper, and finding none, took a calling card someone had given him, and carefully wrote.

  “Fuente Nueva, “he said slowly as he formed the letters.” It’s my little room. I’ll look every day to see if there’s a letter.”
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  She had a swift vision of him, reading a letter in a window flooded with sunshine, above the city’s terraced roofs, and behind him, in the darkness of the room, with a face wise beyond its years, a complacent child waiting.

  He gave her the card. Underneath the address he had written the word “Incredible,” enclosed in quotation marks and underlined twice. She glanced quickly to see his face, but it betrayed nothing.

  Below them the town was blue, the bay almost black.

  “The lighthouse,” said Mjid.

  “It’s flashing,” she observed.

  He turned and walked to the door. “Good-bye,” he said. “You will come back.” He left the door open and went down the stairs. She stood perfectly still and finally moved her head up and down a few times, as if thoughtfully answering a question. Through the open window in the hallway she heard his rapid footsteps on the gravel in the garden. They grew fainter.

  She looked at the bed; at the edge, ready to fall to the floor, was the white card where she had tossed it. She wanted more than anything to lie down and rest. Instead, she went downstairs into the cramped little salon and sat in the corner looking at old copies of L’Illustration. It was almost an hour before dinner would be served.

  (1950)

  How Many Midnights

  HOW MANY MIDNIGHTS, she wondered, had she raised the shade, opened the big window, and leaned out to gaze across the gently stirring city toward the highest towers? Over there behind a certain unmistakable group of them was his building, and at the very top of the building was his apartment, six flights up. In the summer she would look out over the rooftops at some length and sigh, and during the hottest weeks she moved her bed over, directly under the window. Then she would turn off all the lights and sit on the bed combing her hair in the glowing dimness of the city night, or sometimes even by moonlight, which of course was perfect. In the winter, however, she had to content herself with a moment of looking and a flash of imagining before she bounded across the room into bed.